A Thousand Oceans
by Petronille
Summary: They had met once before, but the story of Hook and Undine the water nymph would begin in Neverland and continue in Storybrooke. But someone is determined that it ends in Storybrooke, and that Killian Jones isn't the one to win Undine's heart. Based on Fouque's tale "Undine," one of the inspirations for Andersen's "The Little Mermaid."
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Once Upon a Time," and **_**Undine, **_**one of the inspirations for Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid,"****is a tale by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque.**

**A Thousand Oceans**

_"You must know, my own love, that there are beings in the elements which bear the strongest resemblance to the human race, and which, at the same time, but seldom become visible to you. The wonderful salamanders sparkle and sport amid the flames; deep in the earth the meager and malicious gnomes pursue their revels; the forest-spirits belong to the air, and wander in the woods; while in the seas, rivers, and streams live the widespread race of water-spirits. These last, beneath resounding domes of crystal, through which the sky can shine with its sun and stars, inhabit a region of light and beauty; lofty coral-trees glow with blue and crimson fruits in their gardens; they walk over the pure sand of the sea, among exquisitely variegated shells, and amid whatever of beauty the old world possessed, such as the present is no more worthy to enjoy—creations which the floods covered with their secret veils of silver; and now these noble monuments sparkle below, stately and solemn, and bedewed by the water, which loves them, and calls forth from their crevices delicate moss-flowers and enwreathing tufts of sedge. _

-from the tale _Undine, _by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

**Chapter One**

When Baelfire was very young, he swore to his mother that he had seen the daughter of Godric the fisherman sitting on the beach, whispering something into the water. His mother had scolded him for listening to gossip about the girl. "It's true that she's strange, but now you're sounding like one of the old village wives."

Of course his mother wasn't going to complain, for Godric always seemed to have the best catches and the freshest fish, and he always sold it to her at the best prices. He soon became a prosperous fisherman, and he was able to buy two more fishing boats and expand his business. He soon became a respectable citizen of the town, and he bought a bigger house and was able to dress his daughter in fine clothes. The village wives now dismissed her not only as strange, but as putting on airs. "A conceited little minx, just like her mother was!" they sniffed.

Bael had heard stories of Undine's mother, of how she had been a very wealthy young woman who had eloped with her father. She was of obscure origins, but she was very beautiful and when she sang, she could elicit tears from those with even the hardest of hearts. But the happiness was to be short-lived; the girl's mother died when she was born. Godric was an overly indulgent father, allowing his daughter all sorts of freedoms that other girls could only dream of. While her childish antics may have been amusing during girlhood, they were the cause of much concern as she grew. It caused the village wives to cluck and shake their heads. Godric would have done better to be strict with the girl instead of so forgiving of her faults. Yet for all of this, she could be quite sweet when the mood took her. Many of the village youths, eager to get their hands on the lucrative business and the lovely daughter, spoke of her fair temper, but she would just as soon laugh at them when they began to wax romantic and speak of love. Or else she would grow bored or agitated and spring up and snap at them to leave, only to emerge from the house moments later in a faded cotton gown, hurrying to the seaside.

Bael had gone down to the beach to look for shells one day when he saw her run into the surf. With a laugh she dived into the cresting waves, and a few seconds later she emerged, shaking droplets out of her bright hair. She rubbed the water out of her eyes, and he gasped when he saw her fingers.

There was a fine webbing in between each of them!

"What are you staring at?" she demanded imperiously, her dark blue eyes falling on him.

"Your hands. What happened to your hands?" he stammered, pointing at her hand to emphasize his point.

"Oh, _that_." She huffed impatiently, and in an eye blink the webbing between her fingers was gone. "Is this better?" she said, holding them up.

His jaw went slack. She rolled her eyes at him, then began to wade toward shore.

"You look like a dumbstruck fish. Close your mouth," she ordered. He closed his mouth, his eyes still not leaving her. "Are you going to run and tell your mother now? And will she gossip about it? Though I don't see why she would, since she is the subject of so much gossip herself."

"I won't tell her," he said. "I won't tell anyone, I promise…"

She smiled. "What a noble boy you are! A very sweet boy! Thank you!" And just as quickly she became gracious. She came to him and took his hand for a moment, then let it go. "Oh, look! Look! How lovely it is!"

"How lovely is what?" he said, rubbing his hand after she had let it go. Cold…her touch was so cold…

He turned to see the storm clouds that had begun to gather. The wind began to pick up. "We ought to be getting back," he said. "My father will worry. I think yours will, too."

She laughed, shaking her head. "No, I don't think he'll worry. Papa never worries. Now go if you want."

He drew a trembling breath, then turned to leave as the wind picked up and began to whip the waves fiercely. Undine laughed and held her arms out to the wind, her russet hair stirring in the gale. Then she laughed and stepped into the shallows, twirling a few times as the clouds blew in from the ocean.

He thought to run toward her, call out her name, so that the ocean currents might not take her away, but then he remembered that there was no use in doing that. She was a child of the water, and the water was the last thing that could harm her.

* * *

"I _told_ you to leave her alone, Bae," his mother said as she glanced at her reflection in the mirror again. "She's odd. She'll only lead you into trouble." She pinched her cheeks to add some color to them, a delicate reddish-pink. Her eyes seemed brighter, he noticed, and she carried herself differently. More gracefully, he thought. But where had she learned to walk that way?

Of course. Undine. The girl moved with unrivaled grace, as though she were underwater. "Bewitched," the village wives would hiss to each other, even when she was in earshot. "She's bewitched, that one, just like her mother. She'll end like her mother, too."

"I'm going to the quilting party at Widow Pennyman's," she told Bae, passing her hand over his mussed dark hair. "There's stew warming on the fire. I'll be back late," she said to his father, who had just come into the house. Her voice took on a sharper tone then, and a look of disgust marred her face. She turned to Bae. "Remember what I said about the fisherman's daughter, Baelfire. Let her alone."

Dinner was a silent affair, and he dared not ask his father where his mother had really gone. The melancholy expression on his father's face told him just as much.

The storm raged on through the evening, until the lightning and thunder passed and the downpour softened to a drizzle that pattered against the glass of the windows. He thought that the knocking on the door was just the patter of the rain, until his father opened the door to a pale-faced, sodden Undine. She proffered something wrapped in her shawl, and she wore some sort of thin, silvery, silken cloak.

"Undine! Come in! You'll catch cold!" his father exclaimed in spite of himself. Undine stepped into the warm kitchen, pushing back the hood of her cloak and then handing Bae the soaked shawl.

"Look. Look what I brought for you," she said.

"Clams," Bael's father said as he stood over Bae's shoulder. "It's a very kind surprise, Undine. Thank you."

Undine remained silent as Bael's father took his staff in one hand and the shawl full of clams in another. He hobbled a few steps toward the larder. A look of pity cut across Undine's face and she hurried to his father's side.

"No, no! Let me!" she insisted, holding out her hands like a demanding child, and his father relinquished the filled shawl to her. She took them to the larder and Bae brought her a bucket filled with water.. She put the clams into the bucket, placed the bucket on the shelf of the larder, and returned to the kitchen.

"Thank you, Undine," his father repeated. "Bae's mother will be very pleased with what you brought us. How fresh are they? Did your father say?"

"Oh, no," she answered, sitting down in the spot his father indicated. "He didn't catch them."

"Well, then, my dear, who did?" Bae's father asked. "One of the fisherman working for your father? Did _he _tell you?"

"No, my father didn't catch them, nor did any of his employees. _I _did. And they're very fresh."

Bae's father didn't betray his perplexity at this, except perhaps with a quick raising and lowering of the eyebrows. "I'm sure they are," he said, smiling.

Undine's dark blue eyes looked from Bae's father to Bae, and she seemed to be on the brink of saying something, but then she thought better of it.

"I must go," she said suddenly, springing up. "Papa will be wondering where I am."

"Hurry home, then. It looks like it's going to start pouring again," Bae's father remarked as he opened the door and saw her outside. He looked up at the sky, squinting for a moment, and then he watched as Undine lifted the hood of her cloak over her head.

"Oh, no," she assured him. "It's not going to rain again."

"You believe so?"

"I _know_ so. Good night!" And she waved good-bye and hopped off of the doorstep and onto the path as lightly as a bubble. They watched her for a few moments as she continued up the street, and finally his father closed the door, shaking his head.

"She's a very sweet girl. But a very odd girl," he said. "But she's a very kind girl, no matter what your mother or anyone else might say about her."

* * *

She could hear the sea calling to her, hear her mother's voice on the wind and in the waves even now, as she hurried home.

As Baelfire had left her by the sea when the storm had come in, she had heard the familiar click and chirp of a dolphin pod, and she had laughed and summoned forth the webbing in between her fingers and toes and dived in, letting the salt water slip in through the gills behind her ears. The dolphins had been sent by her mother, and carried the message from her mother and her uncle, the great water-lord of the Hespiridean seas. Her mother missed her father-and her-and her uncle spoke of her cousins and their latest capers, and of his herd of crack hippocampuses, one of which he had chosen just for her. Undine listened, her heart light as she chased a playful set of calves around the shallows. They went further out to sea and circled and trapped a school of mackerel, and Undine was allowed to select one or two for herself for dinner before the dolphins set to gorging themselves.

And then the news became more somber.

_They say that she has found a salamander with a human heart, and she has taken it. She now hunts for a sylph with a human heart, and then she'll come for you. _She could picture the tears in her mother's eyes, blurring her face. _You know what you must do. You must take to sea where your uncle's magic can protect you._

Take to sea. Leave her father. She didn't want to do any of that, but she knew that she must…and soon.

_You will have everything you could ever want and more. And you'll be free to roam the seas as you wish. The magic of the water will protect you. So long as you remain enfolded in the arms of your element, she will never be able to find you._

To say good-bye to everything, to her father, to her governess, and yes, even to Bae and his father Mr. Rumple, to whom her father had always instructed her to be kind and charitable. _That is the way to be. That is the way your mother would be._ _I won't raise a cruel-hearted girl._

She thought of all of this as the dolphin pod left her, as she had spent a good hour or so in the shallows gathering clams. There had been no one else to give them to but Bae and Mr. Rumple, and she had been honest with them about gathering the clams, though she was sure that they had dismissed her as half-mad, as did everyone else in the village.

_Come to the sea. Come to the sea where she will never be able to find you and where you'll live out a long, happy life…_

To see her mother again…

She stopped in her tracks, clenching her fists, biting her lip.

_She searches the kingdoms for a water nymph with a human heart. She will cut it out and kill you, and once she has all four of the elements, who knows what she will unleash?_

_I won't let her find me. I will go to the sea. I will go to my mother._

"Are you all right, miss?"

She jumped at the touch of a hand to hers, and she pulled away, gasping at the suddenness of it.

"Your hands are freezing!" a man's voice exclaimed, and Undine looked up to see that he was rubbing his palms together. And that there were several other men behind him.

"Well," she mustered, "it _has _been raining…"

He cocked a dark eyebrow, his blue eyes lighting up rakishly, and he smiled, showing two rows of perfect, white teeth. "So it has been," he acknowledged. "Are you lost, miss? Maybe I could help you…"

"No. No, I'm not lost. My house is just over there." She pointed toward the lighted windows up the street, and then she turned to face him with an imperious air. "So you see, I'm well on my way home. I was visiting a friend, Mr..."

"I should introduce myself, shouldn't I?" The stranger bowed. "Captain Killian Jones, Miss…"

"Undine," she said.

"Undine. A pretty name." He offered her his arm. "May I see you home, Undine?"

She took it, and oddly, he didn't flinch at the chill of her touch. He tried to make small talk about the weather once again, which Undine answered politely enough. But she had never really been in such a situation before with such a man. Usually if the bachelors of the town offered to see her home or visit her it was because they wished to court her, and not for love of her, but for love of her father's business.

_Well, if they knew the real reason behind his prosperity!_ she thought, smiling to herself.

"You're smiling. Care to share your happy thought?" Killian Jones asked her, starting her from her reverie.

She met his gaze with hers. "Actually, I don't."

"You put on a lot of airs and graces, miss."

"I've been told that by others. They don't seem to like it." She noted that they were close to the front door. "Right here. This is my house."

He craned his neck back to take a look at it. He grinned, saying with a bit of mirth in his voice, "So now I see why you put on a lot of little airs and graces. And I'll tell you now, love, that unlike a lot of the others you know, I _do_ like it."

Undine smiled, trying not to let the blush creep up into her cheeks. "Thank you," she said. "And now I have to bid you good night."

"Good night," he answered, and he watched and made sure she made it into the house safely.

That night, Undine dreamed of blue eyes and pretty smiles, and of the laughter in his voice as he had called her lass, and he told her again how he happened to like her little airs and graces.

* * *

He was a cad and a rogue, a pirate of the worst kind, her father fumed at dinner the following night. He'd had the audacity to run off with Mr. Rumple's wife and poor little Baelfire's mother instead of having the good sense to send her home.

"But, Papa," Undine objected, "she chose to go with him."

Godric harrumphed. "Still he should have sent her away," he declared, pouring himself some more muscat and glaring over the books of his business accounts. "He stole her away. The rogue pirate. Ah, well, that's only to be expected from men like him! Come now, poppet, don't look so much like you're going to cry! Go play your harp and sing a merry tune like your mother used to, and don't think of it any more!"

"I won't, Papa," Undine promised, rising and going to her harp. "But I will say one thing about it."

"And what's that, poppet?" her father asked her, dipping his quill into the ink bottle to make some changes in the books.

"I've only resolved to be kinder to Bae and to his father, as someone like myself ought to."

Her father put down the accounts and smiled at her endearingly. "Yes, that's a very good resolve to have. And yes, my dear girl, someone like you _ought_ to do that."

And as Undine set to playing her harp, nothing more was said of it.

**Author's note: Much of this isn't based on the tale "The Little Mermaid" itself, but on the tales from which Andersen drew inspiration for it: "Undine," "Rusalka," the Greek myths of nymphs, and the Norse tales of the Rhinemaidens. Please be so kind as to leave a review below; it would be much appreciated!**


	2. Chapter 2

**I don't own "Once Upon a Time," and Undine's character is based on the tale of the same name by Frederic de la Motte Fouque.**

**Author's Note: Just for reference, this takes place right before Rumplestiltskin would have taken on the powers of the Dark One and months after Milah had run off with Killian Jones. I'm operating under the assumption that while Cora was a skilled witch, she still had to perfect her technique of extracting hearts as shown in the series.**

**Chapter Two**

As the year wore on, Undine remained steadfast in her vow to be as kind and charitable as she could to Bae and his father. Perhaps her own efforts goaded some of the village wives into following her example, for there were was no question that the boy would always be well fed. Still the disdain for Mr. Rumple remained; there was nothing Undine could do to alleviate that.

She still swam in the ocean at night, relishing the feel of the water as it passed through her gills and the feel of it about her. And each time she ventured into the ocean, the more reluctant she was to return to dry land and her father's house.

And the rumors, the whispers. A pod of mermaids gave her the latest news, that the witch had found and slain a half-human sylph, all for the heart of a creature of both human and elemental blood...

_Your mother has spoken with us, and she says to go to the sea. If you wish to evade the witch, take to the sea. The witch will cut out your heart and leave you to die. She will find you eventually if you remain on land. She is determined, almost obsessed._

She didn't want to think of it, but it still crept up on her as she slept at night. She would awaken from nightmares in a cold sweat, her chest heaving, fancying she heard a cruel laugh, the metallic glimmer of a knife in a poorly lit room, and the sound of her own scream.

Her father burst into the room when he heard her screaming, and he held her close, murmuring to her comfortingly. "There now, poppet, it was only a dream. Just a nightmare. There's nothing to be afraid of."

Undine felt the salt of her tears stinging her eyes, and she wiped them away. The truth. She should tell her father the truth.

"There is something to be frightened of, Papa," she said, disengaging herself from the refuge of hs embrace. "There is something to be very frightened of..."

"What is it?" her father asked her.

She sucked in her breath. "I'll have to join Mother in the sea...and soon. There's someone...a witch..."

"A witch?" her father exclaimed, standing up. "What's this about a witch?"

"There's a witch who's been cutting out the hearts of those who are like me, those who are the children of humans and elementals." She watched as apprehension filled her father's face. "Mother sent a pod of mermaids to me as I swam in the sea tonight. They told me that the witch has taken a sylph. Now she wants a water sprite."

Her father came to her side, stroking her hair. "Your mother and I have always feared this. That was why she went to sea. And who's to say that once the witch has gotten what she has wanted, she won't set out to find more? Yes, poppet, to the sea you must go, and I will take you myself."

"Do you mean it?" she said. "You would see me go and leave you all alone?"

"I would see you off," he replied, smiling wanly. "Now go back to..."

There was a loud pounding at the front door downstairs, and Undine heard the kitchen boy ask the caller the reason for his or her visit. Suddenly there was a loud crashing sound, as though the door had been kicked open and splintered apart, and the boy let out a cry.

"Stay here," Godric instructed Undine. "And if this is danger at our doorstep, then you must run."Do you understand?"

She nodded.

He hurried downstairs and Undine heard him demand, "What is the meaning of this?" Then she heard him groan as someone hit him.

And then the voice. "The girl. Where is she? Tell me where she is!"

Undine wasted no time. She reached for her silvery cloak and ran out of her room and down the hallway and then down the back stairs and out to the garden. She opened the gate and ventured around the corner of the house to the street, where she saw the horses and the men.

"Oi!" one called when he saw her. "Where d'you think you're going?"

Undine turned and ran down the street, through an alley, the cobblestones sharp against her bare feet, her breath coming in quick pants. "Find her! Bring her to me!" she heard a woman's voice shout. "Whatever it takes, don't let her get away!"

She looked back to see a pair of armed men chasing her through the alley. She continued past the back of the tavern, stopping for a moment to catch her breath.

Then she saw the glowing yellow orb levitating toward her. It cast an eerie light upon the brick walls of the buildings surrounding her. She pressed herself against the wall, her blood thrumming in her ears.

_It's looking for me_. She watched as it drew closer. Every muscle within her began to tense, and she burst into a run as the orb's light shined upon her.

"There she is! There!" she heard a man shout. She heard running footsteps approaching from behind, and as they grew closer, she knew it then.

_This is the witch. This is the witch who wants my heart._

Soon the docks were within her line of sight, and she felt relief. _The ocean._

_Once you're within your element, it will protect you. She won't be able to harm you._

Undine felt her heart surge once her bare feet touched the wood of the pier. Once she reached the edge she could jump into the water below, and they wouldn't be able to find her.

She gasped when she saw the cloud of violet smoke materialize in front of her. When the figure within formed into a woman, she took a step back toward the side edge of the pier. The woman regarded her with an expression of disdain, and Undine saw the glint of a dagger as it materialized in her hand.

"Come now, dear, it won't hurt _that_ much," the witch chided. "I promise that I will make it quick for you, little water maid. You'll never know that I cut you."

Undine backed away, and when she felt the edge against her heel, she jumped.

She felt something jolt her and fill her bones with a paralyzing cold right before she hit the water. But as soon as she broke through the surface, whatever hex the witch had used was gone. She felt the webbing appear between her fingers and toes, and she swam out to sea as quickly as she could, not daring to surface. She made her way to the beach and spent the night sleeping fitfully on the ocean bottom. When the sunlight peered through the waters, she cautiously put on the silver cloak that allowed her to blend in with the water and broke the surface to see if there was still anuy danger.

All she saw was a little boy wandering alone on the beach.

_Bae._

She swam toward the beach, just to the point at which she could walk, but where she could still immerse herself if danger threatened. "Bae!" she called. "Baelfire!"

Bae whirled around when his name was called, and he ran to the edge of the beach. "Undine!" he exclaimed. "Undine, I've been looking everywhere for you! This morning, we heard..." His voice trembled a bit. "We heard that someone had broken into your house. The night watchman was called, but they were the king's men...or we thought they were..."

She shuddered. Were they the king's men? Was it the king who was allowing this witch to employ his guards to capture her and cut out her heart? Was it the king who was allowing his men to destroy everything her father had built, everything he had worked for?

"My father. Tell me, how is my father?" she interrupted.

Bae blinked twice. "Oh, Undine, your father...everyone in the household...they're dead. They were all killed."

Undine felt tears prick her eyes. So. It had come to this.

"My father sent me to look for you," Bae went on. "He's worried about you,Undine. The king's men..."

She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, trying to banish the images and sounds from her mind. "Bae," she said. "Bae, if you want, you can tell your father that I'm well, but you can't tell anyone else you've seen me."

The boy stepped back, looking at her as though her words had wounded him. "Why?" he cried out.

She felt remorseful that somehow she was hurting him, but she knew that she _had_ to do this not only for her safety, but that of his and his father's.

"I'm going to sea," she told him. "I'm going to my uncle's kingdom, which is very far away, so very far away that no one will ever find me."

He nodded, swallowing, as though he understood. "But you'll be safe?"

"I'll be safe."

"And will you ever come back?"

She sighed. "I can't be sure of that, Bae," she replied honestly. "But I will try to be back. Someday."

His eyes seemed to shimmer with unshed tears, and he bit his lip. "Just come back. Just try to come back."

"I will," she promised, and she turned away from him and dove into the water so that he couldn't see her tears.

* * *

As soon as she got out to open sea, she joined a pod of dolphins that was on its way to the waters of the Hesperidean Sea, the domain of her uncle, the great water-lord Tirrenio. They did their best to cheer her up and with them at her side, the journey didn't seem so long.

Her mother. She couldn't wait to see her mother, to fall into her arms and cry into her shoulder and tell her about all that had happened. And once she saw the crystal domes and coral buildings of her uncle's palace and the rest of the kingdom surrounding it, she finally felt that she would be safe.

She was stopped by one of the armored guards who patrolled the borders of Tirrenio's domain. He eyed her levelly from atop his hippocampus and, holding his trident at the ready, asked her who she was and what her purpose was for entering the water lord's realm.

"I'm Undine, the daughter of the lord's sister Lilaea," she replied imperiously. "I want to see my mother."

The guard's face seemed to soften then, and he dismounted from his hippocampus. "Come, my lady," he said gently, "I will take you to the barrack so that you might rest and eat."

Undine mounted the hippocampus, grasping the mane as the guard led the steed to the barrack that housed the border guards. She was immediately shown to a room by the general's wife, who seemed to wonder why she was wearing a cotton nightgown instead of the diaphanous, silken garments that were the preferred attire of the waterborn.

"You must have come a very long way, lady," the general's wife remarked, setting a bowl of dried fish in front of Undine. "And you must be very hungry," she added as she watched Undine devour the meal. She reached for some nectarines and handed them to the girl. "Here. Have these as well."

"Thank you." Undine decided to be a little daintier this time and ate the nectatrines slowly section by section after she had peeled them. It was a way to occupy her hands as she tried to collect her thoughts.

Her mother. How would she tell her mother that her father had been killed by the king's men, that he had died trying to save his daughter from a mad witch determined to have her heart?

_The truth. Just tell her the truth. He loved me—he loved us both—very much, and he died protecting me. Protecting us._

But even though it seemed simple enough to put the thoughts away while she was awake, they raced throughout her mind as she lay down to sleep.

It was as though she were reliving the previous night, but it was different this time. Instead, she raced down the front stairway, only to find that it was slick with blood and that she tripped on the last step and fell, landing on the floor. As she tried to pick herself up, she saw her father's face just inches from her own, and his gray eyes stared sightlessly at her. There was a deep cut across his throat, and the blood had stained the floor.

"Little water maid."

The voice. She heard it again.

"Little water maid, don't be frightened." The witch materialized in front of her, coalescing out of cloud of violet smoke that also reeked of the flower. There was something odd about this witch. There was a certain coldness in her eyes, a certain air of superiority in her overall demeanor. "It's not going to hurt. I'll make it quick and spare you the pain, I promise."

"Who are you?" Undine demanded. "What is it that you want?"

The witch laughed, bending down and stroking Undine's hair. "Why, little water maid, you know why I'm here. I'm here to cut out your heart." And she plunged the knife into Undine's chest...

Undine awoke with a shriek, clutching the blankets to her chest.

_A dream. That's all it was. A terrible, terrible dream._

She caught her breath and lie down again, trying to calm herself.

_You're home. You're safe. You're in the sea, where she will never find you. _

_Little water maid..._

"No," she said aloud. "I'm home. I'm safe."

But she knew that she wasn't safe from her dreams.

* * *

Her mother came for her late the following morning. Lilaea, the youngest and most favored sister of Tirrenio, arrived in her litter made of coral and encrusted with mother-of-pearl and drawn by a team of hippocampuses the colors of emerald and lapis lazuli.

Her mother had changed very little. Her long hair was still golden and waved behind her in the ocean current like a fan. Her eyes, the same dark blue as Undine's, shone with tendeness and genuine concern for her daughter. She enfolded Undine in her arms and Undine clung to her, just as she would when she was a child.

"I am happy you have finally come home, my darling girl," Lilea said, kissing Undine on the forehead. "Tell me, how is your father? No doubt he is sad that you've left him...but I'm sure he understands why..."

Undine's eyes filled with tears then, and she wailed, "Oh, Mother!" Tearfully she recounted the story of her flight from the house and the deaths of her father and the rest of the household at the hands of the witch and the thugs who had been in her employ. She remembered that night on the sandy bottom, shivering with fear, her sadness at leaving Bae and his father, the emptiness and feeling of loss that had come from the death of her father.

"Oh, Undine! My own Undine!" Here she heard her mother begin to weep, and mother and daughter held each other close, mourning the husband and father who had loved them so and who had died protecting them.

* * *

They were silent on their way back to the palace. Undine sat with her head on her mother's shoulder, and presently Lilaea put her arm about her, drawing her close.

"Your uncle will be most disheartened to hear of this," she told Undine. "No doubt he will find the witch who has done this and seek justice for it. And the king...who was the king of that land?"

Undine thought for a moment. "Leopold. His name was Leopold. But I don't know if he was aware of how his men were used..."

"All he would need to do was surrender the witch, and the men who were in her employ, to your uncle. He would then decide what would be done with them."

And somehow this gave Undine a sense of peace. Tirrenio would seek retribution, and the witch who had tried to take her life and who had taken the lives of so many others would die a slow, torturous death.

**Author's Note: I listened to the song "Never Let Me Go" by Florence + the Machine while writing this chapter, which seems to be a song on the minds of a lot of those who ship Hook/Ariel (in this story Undine). And Undine's kindness toward Bae and himself will be something that Rumplestiltskin will remember well. **

**As for who I'm thinking of when I picture OCs, I picture Rachel Hurd-Wood as Undine and British actress Hermione Norris (from "Wire in the Blood," "Spooks," and "Outcasts") as Lilaea.**

**Now please be so kind as to leave a review and tell me what you think! Thanks in advance!**


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